Meat has had a rough few years. Since a shocking 2006 report found that livestock are a major contributor to climate change, there has been a nationwide ― if not global ― movement to eat less meat.
But many experts say that the war on meat is missing the point. There is an extensive body of research suggesting that livestock should not shoulder blame for the climate crisis. In fact, these experts would argue that grazing animals are a crucial part of the solution.
“The current methods of meat production are absolutely unacceptable from an environmental and animal welfare standpoint, but that doesn’t logically lead us to the conclusion that we should get rid of meat,” said Nicolette Hahn Niman, an environmental-lawyer-turned-cattle-rancher and author of “Defending Beef.” “The conversation tends to miss this basic point: It’s not whether or not we have animals, it’s how they’re managed.”
Niman’s bookexplains in great scientific detail how, through proper management systems, livestock have the potential to positively impact ― even reverse ― the effects of climate change.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/celia-sun-XSzgadZ8fbU-unsplash.jpg10801920Katy Seversonhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngKaty Severson2019-07-19 00:10:362019-07-19 00:10:38Can Meat Actually Save The Planet?
This week, a petition signed by more than 100,000 people was delivered to Congress, outlining issues that should be addressed in Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey’s (D-MA) Green New Deal. This petition shows overwhelming support for the Green New Deal, and calls for more attention to be brought to how our food system can be reformed to combat climate change. With the food and farming sector being the United States’ largest employer, and the country being one of the highest contributors toward climate change, citizens are calling for action to be taken to protect our world.
As someone in their mid-twenties, I have grown up seeing how climate change is actively impacting me and my community. Here in California, I expect droughts in the summer and extreme wildfires or mudslides in the fall; learning from a young age to always conserve water because the next shortage is just around the corner. Young activists from all across the U.S. have seen similar changes in their home states, and we recognize that our future depends on action being taken to stop the climate crisis before it is too late.
A unique opportunity to address climate change can be found in our agriculture sector—an area which must be made sustainable if we’re going to survive. Climate scientists have identified agriculture as one of the largest contributors to climate change. This an opportunity to shift agricultural practices away from the large scale, conventional farms that currently dominate our food system to a regenerative, locally-focused, small-scale system that values the welfare of the land and those who work it. CFS has identified several focus points that should be implemented with the passing of the GND resolution to cut back greenhouse gas emissions and create a healthier, more sustainable food system.
1. Invest in regenerative, local agriculture
The future of agriculture lies in the shifting of practices away from large scale monocultures towards small and medium-sized diversified farms. We must wean away from the mass amounts of toxic chemical pesticides and fertilizers being used, and instead integrate regenerative practices such as cover cropping, the use of compost, and the implementation of hedgerows as alternatives that not only add nutrients into the soil, but provide many other ecosystem services. Among these, regenerative agriculture protects biodiversity, including the native bees and pollinators that are currently being decimated by conventional agriculture. Our “Regenerating Paradise” video series covers many practices currently being practiced in Hawai’i—including several that can be implemented nationwide—to reduce carbon emissions and protect our soils. Implementing these practices can sustain our food production all while sequestering carbon, protecting pollinators, and promoting on-farm biodiversity.
Switching to these regenerative agriculture practices will not be easy, but it will be beneficial. Despite research showing the vast benefits that come from cover cropping and other regenerative practices, farmers have been slow to start implementing them. Government and university grants, technical assistance, and further research should be funded to help promote these practices, transition farms, and aid the continuous education of farmers and farmworkers. This investment will have far-reaching effects on farms—preserving native pollinator habitat, sequestering carbon, and providing climate-smart food to local communities.
2. Cut meat consumption and shut down environmentally-harmful animal factory farms
Disinvestment from factory farms is necessary, not only from a climate standpoint, but from a larger human and environmental health perspective as well. Large scale animal operations pollute the water, lead to a higher risk of disease in humans, and contributelarge amounts of methane and other greenhouse gases into the air. Cutting back meat consumption, purchasing meat from local sources, and shifting toward plant-based sources of protein are all ways that individuals can help. More people than ever, especially young people, have recognized the harmful impacts of meat consumption and we are turning toward a flexitarian diet, vegetarianism, and veganism as a way to cut back on our carbon footprint. The government has the opportunity to support this effort on a larger scale by providing financial support and technical assistance to ranchers to help them transition to pasture-based and integrated livestock operations that reduce livestock’s impact on climate change and help sequester carbon in the soil.
CFS’s recently launched EndIndustrialMeat.org, a website that highlights some of the negative impacts that come with factory farming, including the vast amount of carbon released into the air and heavy metals being drained into the ground; serious consequences that disproportionately affect rural populations and disadvantaged communities. The GND’s goal to secure clean air and water, healthy food, and a sustainable environment for all communities mean that shutting down these harmful operations is imperative.
3. Reverse the trend of consolidation within the agriculture sector
For decades now, there has been increasing consolidation of seed, livestock, and other agriculture-related companies. These mega-corporations have purchased vast quantities of land and set the rules for how a farm has to run, undercutting disadvantaged farmers and farmworkers, and wrecking rural communities. GND policies can be used to break up these mega-farms, and empower local communities to take back the food system. Breaking up these predatory mega-farms would not only reinvigorate the economies of rural areas, but it would also give these communities access to the healthy, climate-friendly food necessary to slow the rate of climate change.
The growth of small and medium-sized farms would allow farmers and farmworkers to set fair wages and provide safe and humane conditions for themselves and a future for their children. Doing so would not only allow current farmers to continue their operations, but also would open the door for young farmers to have access to the land, resources, and funds needed to operate for a viable, sustainable farm.
4. Support young and disadvantaged farmers
Finally, we must utilize the GND to support disadvantaged and young farmers, paving the way for a climate-friendly food future. For a long time, people have been turning away from farming, instead opting for job opportunities found in cities. For the past several years, there has been a renewed interest in working the land in a regenerative, holistic manner. We must support these new farmers, along with the farmworkers who have been subjugated to the abuses of industrial agriculture, to forage a community-focused, regenerative food system.
The principles of equity and justice outlined in the GND must guide our transition away from industrial monocultures, and toward a food system that supports and uplifts disadvantaged groups, providing the economic assistance and infrastructure needed to improve these communities, and ultimately improving our economy as a whole. Likewise, many young and disadvantaged farmers have limited access to the equipment and mentorship needed to run a successful farm enterprise. Having grants and training programs available to take on the huge costs of tractors, land, and resources necessary to start a farm should be central to the Green New Deal.
Young people have paved the way for the Green New Deal and our future depends on immediate action being taken to stop climate change. Not only will this resolution allow for the huge changes needed to prevent climate change, but will allow for new opportunities for farmers. While the challenge ahead of us won’t be easy, there are many things that can be done to mitigate current greenhouse gas emissions that aren’t being implemented. The GND is an opportunity to reform our way of farming to allow for huge cuts to current emissions, all while creating a more equitable food system.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/agriculture-animals-beef-cattle-735974.jpg49127360Kelsey Krugerhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngKelsey Kruger2019-07-19 00:02:572019-07-19 12:05:27The Green New Deal Must Include Regenerative Agriculture and an End to Factory Farming
Un nuevo estudio asegura que existe un área del tamaño de Estados Unidos disponible para plantar árboles en todo el mundo, y que esto podría tener un impacto dramático en la lucha contra el cambio climático.
El estudio muestra que el espacio descrito para sembrar nuevos árboles es mucho mayor de lo que se pensaba anteriormente, y reduciría el dióxido de carbono (CO2) en la atmósfera en un 25%.
Según sus autores, se trata de la solución más efectiva para el cambio climático de que dispone el mundo en este momento.
Pero otros investigadores dicen que los resultados de la investigación son “demasiado buenos para ser verdad”.
La capacidad de los árboles para absorber el dióxido de carbono hace que sean un arma valiosa en la lucha contra el aumento de las temperaturas.
El Panel Intergubernamental sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC, por sus siglas en inglés) dijo que si el mundo quisiera limitar el aumento a 1,5 °C para 2050, se necesitaría un millón de hectáreas adicionales de árboles.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/nature-3294681_1920.jpg10801920Matt McGrathhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngMatt McGrath2019-07-17 19:10:422019-07-17 19:10:47Cambio climático: ¿esta solución natural es la más efectiva para combatir el calentamiento global?
Sir David Attenborough and most of the elite of the scientific community are now telling us that we only have 10 years to act if we are to avoid irreversible climate change. They’re also saying that farming must play a leading role in helping us achieve net zero emissions.
It’s not surprising that most farmers and landowners are asking how they should respond.
Most experts agree that the only way we can actually take CO2 out of the atmosphere is to rebuild the soil carbon that 50-plus years of continuous arable farming has removed. To do that, we need to switch to mixed farming systems that include a crop rotation with pastures grazed by cows or sheep.
The key question is how could such a switch be profitable, especially in a country whose younger generation — including our own children — is reducing its intake of red meat, believing it’s the right thing to do, both for their health and the health of the planet, in some cases going vegetarian and vegan?
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/hands-1838658_1920-1170x783.jpg7831170Toby Keelhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngToby Keel2019-07-17 18:49:232019-07-17 18:49:25How Farming Can Change to Feed Us All While Saving the Planet — and No, You Absolutely Won’t Have to Become Vegan
Roma, 3 jul (EFE).- La agricultura ecológica debe integrarse con otros métodos de innovación con el fin de que los sistemas alimentarios se vuelvan sostenibles, afirmaron este miércoles asesores de la ONU en un nuevo informe.
El Grupo de expertos de alto nivel del Comité de Seguridad Alimentaria Mundial (CSA), un foro intergubernamental de Naciones Unidas en el que también participan el sector privado y la sociedad civil, presentó en Roma las conclusiones de un estudio centrado en la agroecología.
En las últimas décadas ese concepto “dinámico” se ha expandido del terreno a los paisajes y a los sistemas alimentarios en general, dijo en el acto el jefe del equipo encargado del informe, Fergus Sinclair.
Entre los principios generales por los que se rige la agroecología a nivel local están el reciclaje, la reducción de insumos externos, la salud del suelo y de los animales, la diversificación económica, la gobernanza de los recursos naturales y la participación de distintos actores.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/markus-winkler-HeqXGxnsnX4-unsplash.jpg30722048La Vanguardiahttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngLa Vanguardia2019-07-11 17:26:352019-07-11 17:26:37Expertos instan a integrar la agroecología con otras formas de producción
If you’re a cattle producer, you may already have heard the term “regenerative agriculture.” If you’re a grain producer, maybe not.
But that’s about to change. This spring, General Mills announced a plan to advance regenerative agriculture practices on one million acres of farmland in the U.S. and Canada by 2030, and Cargill Canada announced its Sustainable Canola Program.
“We have been feeding families for more than 150 years and we need a strong planet to enable us to feed families for the next 150 years,” General Mills chairman and CEO Jeff Harmening said in a press release. “We recognize that our biggest opportunity to drive positive impact for the planet we all share lies within our own supply chain, and by being a catalyst to bring people together to drive broader adoption of regenerative agriculture practices.”
The Rodale Institute in the U.S. coined the term to describe a kind of organic agriculture that not only maintains soil resources but improves them by limiting soil disturbance, maintaining soil cover, increasing biodiversity, keeping living roots in the ground and integrating animals into cropping systems.
By the time California rancher Doniga Markegard picks up the phone around lunchtime, she has already moved the chickens, fed the chickens, fed the pigs, cared for a new litter of 11 piglets, moved the sheep, tended to the horses, milked the cow, and completed a business advising session about the future of her family’s 10,000-acre operation. Overall, a pretty typical Monday.
“We’re good at working with the land and working with the animals, but then all of a sudden you have to add marketing and sales and inventory management,” says Markegard. Based 50 miles south of San Francisco in Half Moon Bay, Markegard and her family produce grass-fed beef and lamb and pastured pork and chicken for customers in the Bay Area. If they operated in a more traditional way, they would specialize in a single product and plug neatly into the industrial agriculture system. Instead, in order to break even, they have to run the equivalent of a consumer-facing small business with a farm attached.
“We’d love to just be out on the land with the livestock, doing what we do, but that’s not practical when you really want to be fully regenerative,” she says.
Regenerative agriculture might sound at first like a subtle variation on organic. But if the term “organic” highlights what’s absent—no chemical fertilizers, no pesticides—”regenerative” goes a step further, advocating for practices like adaptive multi-paddock grazing, in which ruminants like cows and sheep are slowly rotated across a property, so they graze on and fertilize one section of the farm at a time while allowing the rest to naturally regrow and replenish. Methods like this require more hands-on planning involvement from the farmers, but they’ve been found to restore soil health, capture carbon, and help ranches thrive over the long term.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/pexels-photo-841303.jpeg8531280Ainsley Harrishttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngAinsley Harris2019-07-01 12:52:502019-09-09 12:05:58The Green New Deal Wants Farmers to Restore the Land, Not Keep Wrecking It
While earning his undergraduate degree, Dr. Richard Teague knew that the grassland and cropping management being taught wasn’t truly sustainable.
“Agricultural land is generally being managed in a manner that is degrading the land resource. In particular, the soil function and ecosystem biodiversity that we need working properly to provide the ecosystem services that we depend on—we have to look at it in a different way,” he tells AFN.
Now a grazing systems ecologist and professor at Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Teague grew up in Zimbabwe. His father had an ecological education, so Teague has always approached agricultural research through this lens. After obtaining a PhD in the Department of Botany and Microbiology at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, he was recruited to the United States in 1991. Then, looking to speak to farmers who had shown the highest soil carbon levels while doing well in their businesses, he contacted the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Texas.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/irena-carpaccio-TD83GYA8E64-unsplash.jpg26674000Emily Paynehttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngEmily Payne2019-06-25 18:06:532019-06-25 18:06:55Dr. Richard Teague: Regenerative Organic Practices “Clean Up the Act of Agriculture”
Rancher Will Harris says he was “stunned” when he got wind last week that Impossible Foods, the makers of the plant-based Impossible Burger, called regenerative grazing “the ‘clean coal’ of meat” in their 2019 Impact Report.
Speaking by phone from White Oak Pastures, his 153-year-old farm in Bluffton, Georgia, Harris said, “I think there were many mistruths in that attack.”
The feud is the latest in an ongoing discussion about whether regenerative meat production and high-tech plant-based alternatives can co-exist. And for holistically managed animal operations like Harris’s, the suggestion that all meat production should be seen as having the same impact on the environment constitutes a battle cry.
Addressing Climate Change
“We emulate nature,” Harris says in defense of the 2,500-acre farm where he raises 10 species of livestock in a vertically integrated cycle. At White Oak Pastures, Harris’s “100,000 beating hearts” are born on the farm, reared in its plentiful pastures, and slaughtered on site.
https://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/adult-beef-bite-1059040.jpg47903832Nicole Rasulhttps://regenerationinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/RI-Logo-New.pngNicole Rasul2019-06-19 12:59:122019-06-19 12:59:18Impossible Foods and Regenerative Grazers Face Off in a Carbon Farming Dust-Up
May 2019 was a turning point for climate change. The world reached a record of 415.3 parts per million of carbon dioxide (ppm CO2 )in the atmosphere—the most in over 3 million years. The UK Parliament declared an environmental and climate emergency on May 1. Pope Francis followed this by declaring a climate emergency on June 14.
A study published in May shows that if we don’t succeed in radically reducing emissions, civilization could collapse by 2050. The authors of the report showed that we are on track to “… a world of ‘outright chaos’ on a path to the end of human civilization and modern society as we have known it…”
The good news is that we can turn this around by scaling up regenerative agriculture.
Why regenerative agriculture?
Regenerative
agriculture is based on a range of food and farming systems that use the photosynthesis
of plants to capture CO2 and store it in the soil. The soil holds
more than double the amount of carbon than the atmosphere and biomass (forests
and plants) combined.
Why is it so important to dramatically reduce the current rate of CO2 emissions?
If emissions are not reduced soon, we
will be going into catastrophic climate change, that we may not be able to
reverse. This is because it will take centuries to get the heat out of our
oceans. Ocean heat is a significant driver of our weather. The oceans and the
atmosphere are already around 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) warmer
than the industrial revolution.
The energy needed to heat the
atmosphere and the ocean by 1.8 degrees is equivalent to billions of atomic
bombs. I am using this violent metaphor so that people can understand how much
energy is being released into our atmosphere and oceans and why we will get
more extreme weather events wreaking havoc on our communities and environment.
This extra energy is already violently
fueling and disrupting our weather systems. It causing weather events to be far
more intense. Winter storms are becoming colder and can be pushed further south
and north than normal due to this energy, bringing damaging snowstorms and intense
floods. Similarly, summer storms, especially hurricanes, tornadoes, tropical
lows etc. are far more frequent and intense with deluging destructive rainfall
and floods. Droughts and heat waves are more common and are resulting in more
crop failures. They are also fueling damaging forest and grass fires that are
burning out whole communities and changing regional ecologies due to not
allowing time for recovery before the next fires.
The frequency and intensity of these
types of events will only get exponentially worse when the world warms to 3.6
degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) which is the upper limit of the Paris
climate agreement. And we are on track to shoot past this goal.
Managing climate change is a major issue that we have to deal with now
Atmospheric CO2 levels have been increasing at 2 parts per million (ppm) per year. The level of CO2 reached a new record of 400 ppm in May 2016. However, despite all the commitments countries made in Paris in December 2015, the levels of CO2 increased by 3.3 ppm in 2016 creating a record. It increased by 3.3 ppm from 2018 to set a new record of 415.3 ppm in May 2019. This is a massive 60 percent increase in emissions per year since Paris and shows the reality is that most countries are not even close to meeting their Paris reduction commitments and many must be cheating on or ignoring their obligations.
According to the World Meteorological Organization, “Geological records show that the current levels of CO2 correspond to an ‘equilibrium’ climate last observed in the mid-Pliocene (3–5 million years ago), a climate that was 2–3 °C (3.6 – 5.4 F) warmer, where the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melted and even some of the East Antarctic ice was lost, leading to sea levels that were 10–20 m (30 to 60ft) higher than those today.”
Global sea levels rises will cause the
atoll island countries, large parts of Bangladesh, Netherlands, coastal USA,
New York, New Orleans, Miami, London, Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Shanghai,
Singapore, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Dar es Salam and other low lying areas
to go under water
Even if the world transitioned to 100 percent renewable energy tomorrow, this will not stop the temperature and sea level rises because it will take more than 100 years for the CO2 levels to drop. According to latest report, sea level rises, droughts and floods will cause a huge refugee crisis for over a billion people by 2050 and throw our civilization into chaos. The world cannot cope with 2 million refugees from Syria. How do we cope hundreds of millions of climate change refugees? There will be wars over food, water, land.
The fact is we have to speed up the
transition to renewable energy and we have to make a great effort to drawdown
CO2 in the atmosphere.
Reversing climate change
Four hundred and fifteen ppm is way past the Paris objective of limiting the temperature increase to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). The levels need to be well below 350 ppm. The excess CO2 must be drawn down from the atmosphere to stop damaging climate change.
In order to
stabilize atmospheric CO2 levels, regenerative agricultural systems
would have to drawdown the current emissions of 3.3 ppm of CO2 per
year. Using the accepted formula that 1 ppm CO2 = 7.76 Gt CO2
means that 25.61 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 per year needs to be drawn
down from the atmosphere.
Potential of best practice regenerative agriculture
BEAM (Biologically Enhanced Agricultural Management), developed by Dr. David Johnson of New Mexico State University, produces compost with a high diversity of soil microorganisms. Multiple crops grown with BEAM have achieved very high levels of sequestration. Published research by Dr. Johnson and colleagues show. “… a 4.5 year agricultural field study promoted annual average capture and storage of 10.27 metric tons soil C ha-1 year -1 while increasing soil macro-, meso- and micro-nutrient availability offering a robust, cost effective carbon sequestration mechanism within a more productive and long-term sustainable agriculture management approach.” These results have since been replicated in other trials.
These
figures mean that BEAM can sequester 37,700 kilos of CO2 per hectare
per year which is approximately 37,000 pounds of CO2 per acre.
BEAM
can be used in all soil based food production systems including annual crops,
permanent crops and grazing systems. If BEAM was extrapolated globally across
agricultural lands it would sequester 185 Gt of CO2 per year.
Potential of regenerative grazing
The
Savory Institute and many others have been scaling up holistic managed grazing
systems on every arable continent. There is now a considerable body of
published science and evidence based practices showing that these systems
regenerate degraded lands, improve productivity, water holding capacity and
soil carbon levels.
Around 70 percent of the world’s agricultural lands are used for grazing. The published evidence shows that correctly managed pastures can build up soil carbon faster than many other agricultural systems and this is stored deeper in the soil.
Research
by published Machmuller et al. 2015: “In a region of extensive soil degradation
in the southeastern United States, we evaluated soil C accumulation for 3 years
across a 7-year chronosequence of three farms converted to management-intensive
grazing. Here we show that these farms accumulated C at 8.0 Mg ha−1 yr−1,
increasing cation exchange and water holding capacity by 95% and 34%,
respectively.”
The
means that they have sequestered 29,360 kilos of CO2 per hectare per
year. This is approximately 29,000 pounds of CO2 per acre. If these
regenerative grazing practices were implemented on the world’s grazing lands
they would sequester 98.6 Gt of CO2 per year.
Ending the climate emergency
Transitioning
a small proportion of global agricultural production to these two
peer-reviewed, evidence based, best practice, regenerative systems will
sequester enough CO2 to reverse climate change and restore the
global climate.
Ten percent of agricultural lands under BEAM could sequester 18.5 Gt of CO2 per year.
And a further 10 percent of grasslands under regenerative grazing could sequester 10 Gt of CO2 per year.
This
would result in 28.5 Gt of CO2 per year being sequestered into the
soil which is more than the amount of sequestration needed to drawdown the 25.61
Gt of CO2 that is currently being emitted.
These back-of-the envelope calculations are designed to show the considerable potential of scaling up proven high-performing regenerative systems. The examples are “shovel ready” solutions as they are based on existing practices. There is no need to invest in expensive, potentially dangerous and unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage or geo-engineering.
We
are in a climate change emergency and we need every tool in the tool box to fix
this problem. We don’t have the luxury of wasting precious time on intellectual
arguments about whether this is possible or to convince skeptics and land
managers unwilling to change.
It is time to get on with drawing down the excess CO2 by scaling up existing regenerative agriculture practices. This is very doable and achievable. It would require minimal financial costs to fund existing institutions, training organizations and relevant NGOs to run courses and workshops.
The
widespread adoption of best practice regenerative agriculture systems should be
the highest priority for farmers, ranchers, governments, international
organizations, elected representatives, industry, training organizations,
educational institutions and climate change organizations. We owe this to
future generations and to all the rich biodiversity on our precious living
planet.
References/sources:
Johnson
D, Ellington J and Eaton W, (2015)
Development of soil microbial communities for promoting sustainability
in agriculture and a global carbon fix, PeerJ PrePrints |
https://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.789v1 | CC-BY 4.0 Open Access | rec:
13 Jan 2015, publ: 13 Jan 2015
Lal
R (2008). Sequestration of atmospheric CO2 in global carbon pools. Energy and
Environmental Science, 1: 86–100.
McCosker,
T. 2000. “Cell Grazing – The First 10 Years in Australia,” Tropical
Grasslands. 34: 207-218.
Machmuller
MB, Kramer MG, Cyle TK, Hill N, Hancock D & Thompson A (2014). Emerging
land use practices rapidly increase soil organic matter, Nature Communications
6, Article number: 6995 doi:10.1038/ncomms7995, Received 21 June 2014 Accepted
20 March 2015 Published 30 April 2015
NOAS
(2017). National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (US)
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-much-will-earth-warm-if-carbon-dioxide-doubles-pre-industrial-levels,
Accessed Jan 30 2017
Spratt
D and Dunlop I, 2019, Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario
approach,
Breakthrough
– National Centre for Climate Restoration,
Melbourne, Australia
www.breakthroughonline.org.au,
May 2019 Updated 11 June 2019
Tong
W, Teague W R, Park C S and Bevers S, 2015, GHG Mitigation Potential of
Different Grazing Strategies in the United States Southern Great Plains,
Sustainability 2015, 7, 13500-13521; doi:10.3390/su71013500, ISSN 2071-1050,
www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability
United
Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), FAOSTAT data on land use, retrieved December
4, 2015
The
total amount of land used to produce food is 4,911,622,700 Hectares (18,963,881
square miles).
A
basic calculation shows the potential of scaling up this simple technology
across the global agricultural lands. Soil Organic Carbon x 3.67 = CO2
which means that 10.27 metric tons soil carbon = 37.7 metric tons of CO2
per hectare per year (t CO2/ha/yr). This means BEAM can sequester
37.7 tons of CO2 per hectare which is approximately 38,000 pounds of
CO2 per acre.
If
BEAM was extrapolated globally across agricultural lands it would sequester 185
Gt of CO2/yr.
(37.7
t CO2/ha/yr X 4,911,622,700 ha = 185,168,175,790t CO2/ha/yr)
Regenerative grazing calculations
To
explain the significance of Machmuller’s figures: 8.0 Mg ha−1 yr−1 = 8,000 kgs
of carbon being stored in the soil per hectare per year. Soil Organic
Carbon x 3.67 = CO2, which means that these grazing systems have
sequestered 29,360 kgs (29.36 metric tons) of CO2/ha/yr. This is
approximately 30,000 pounds of CO2 per acre.
If
these regenerative grazing practices were implemented on the world’s grazing
lands they would sequester 98.6 Gt CO2/yr.
(29.36t CO2/ha/yr X 3,358,567,600 ha = 98,607,544,736t CO2/ha/yr)
